


seventy five light years from here to home

by pvwork



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Attempt at Humor, Fake Science, IN SPACE!, M/M, Motorcycles, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-10 00:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2003880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pvwork/pseuds/pvwork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sawamura Daichi is the captain of <i>Wild Crow</i>. He's had some wild adventures in space, if you must know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. love in this club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Daichi gets a lap full of Captain Kuroo.

Daichi wasn’t quite sure what he did in a previous life to deserve this, but it must have been something truly awful. Or many truly awful things. Like tipping over senior citizens in their sleep and feasting on the blood of young unicorns every full moon. Terrible, no good, unjust crimes he must have committed to deserve this fate.

He’d had walked into _Inspirational_ with little fuss from the heavily muscled bouncer at the door, who had noticed him in the crowd and ushered him in with a wink and a nod. 

They might have worked out together a few times. 

Anyway, the night had started like this:

“Hey guys,” Daichi said as he’d settled into a seat between Nishinoya and Ryuu. “How’s the food?” 

Hinata looked up from across the table with tears in his eyes and said soulfully, “The meat is delicious.”

“The drinks are stellar,” Ryuu tapped his glass of nuclear blue liquor that _sparkled_ , small stars swirling in turbulent waves, and took a sip.

“Not much to complain about at all,” came from Nisnhinoya as he leaned back in his chair. 

And it was ending like this: 

“The view is excellent from here,” an extremely tipsy and handsy Kuroo Tetsuro said with his cheek pressed to the top of Daichi’s head. He’d managed to situate himself in Daichi’s lap and wrap his arms around his neck in a grip that would make any professional wrestler proud. 

Kuroo was also purring and rubbing against Daichi in a manner that was aggressively adorable, if that was even possible. Daichi wouldn’t be surprised to find out that somewhere along the line, Kuroo had had his genes spliced with that of a very cuddly jungle cat. That would explain where he got the piercing amber eyes, coarse black hair, and propensity to cuddle from. 

Suga the Traitor was sitting a little ways away, sipping his mint mojito and showing no signs of even the least bit concern for Daichi, his very best friend in the whole known universe. 

The worst part was, Daichi couldn’t even say that he hadn’t seen this coming. 

When Kuroo had stalked over with his eyes all a-gleaming in the soft yellow lighting, Daichi could have easily directed him towards Kenma and the rest of Kuroo’s crew situated a few tables down.

But, speaking when Kuroo had stalked over in an exaggeratedly predatory manners, all rolling shoulders and liquid hips, wearing the most ragged pair of leather pants Daichi’d ever laid eyes on, had been startlingly difficult. The pants he was wearing looked like the photo negative of what ripped pants should be, more holes than actual pants so that every move Kuroo made was basically mile-long legs and slick looking leather placed at strategic points on the achingly long visual journey from ankle to hip. 

Daichi hadn’t been able to find Kuroo a seat, but he’d ended up stumbling and landing neatly in Daichi’s lap, effectively finding a seat in the crowded establishment without any assistance. 

Kuroo was shimmying his hips in an effort to get out of Daichi’s lap right now and get back to ‘speaking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’. With his hips. To do so, Kuroo made a half-concerted flail that involved all his limbs in an attempt to escape Daichi’s loose hold around his alleged oath keeping hips.

“Daichi,” Kuroo breathed against his face, his mouth brushing the sensitive skin of Daichi’s temple and making him shiver despite himself. “Be a good sport. Maybe I’ll let you dance with me.” 

He ran his fingers along the back of Daichi’s neck in a surprisingly coordinated way. Daichi almost let him up, but then Kuroo reached for his glass of tonic and gin to try and rehydrate before hitting the dance floor again and missed it by a cool three light years or so. 

“I think you should go home, Kuroo.” Daichi tried using his captain’s voice, the one that usually made people get to work, but only made Kuroo smile, slow and sultry as he curled up even closer, tilting Daichi’s head back with a touch, so that when he next spoke he was practically leaving butterfly kisses at the corner of Daichi’s mouth. 

“Yes Captain, please take me home. Just give the command and I’m all yours.” 

Daichi frowned his sternest frown and threw a layer of responsibility and trustworthiness on top of the low level fire Kuroo’s words had tried to ignite in his belly. 

He helped Kuroo stand and then guided him over to the table where about half his crew was having a merry time playing poker. Kuroo was giggling and swaying against him on the way over, smelling like sweat, beer, and motor oil. The first two were from being in the bar, brought on by dancing and drinking, sometimes at the same time. The last one was from living the life of a space captain and part time mechanic, every few days spent elbow deep in engine guts.

Daichi did all this while feeling ridiculously thankful for lighting tech everywhere who worked at seedy establishments that brewed moonshine in the cellars and lit everything in shoddy yellow light. The flush that had no doubt crept down his neck probably wasn’t that visible.

The whole exchange between them had lasted exactly four minutes forty seven seconds. Daichi had counted.

“I was hoping you would be able to handle him for, like, two more minutes,” Kenma sighed as Daichi helped Kuroo into a seat. 

Kuroo immediately leaned over Lev’s shoulder and ooh-ed loudly at his hand. 

“He couldn’t handle the heat. So he had to let go of this shining star,” Kuroo said in a sing song voice. He gestured in a sweeping motion to himself and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively to make more clear that he was trying to make a double entendre. 

“I thought the saying was ‘if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen,’” Lev said in a genuinely confused tone. 

Kuroo wrapped an arm around Lev’s shoulders and leaned in close. “Lev, Lev, Lev, you have so many things to learn. And I can teach them all to you.”

Daichi looked to Kenma, who shrugged unapologetically and laid down a winning hand. It’s like he wasn’t even sorry that Daichi’s dignity had been sacrificed so that he could win a game of poker. Everyone groaned and threw in handfuls of credit chips and hearty fuck you’s in Kenma’s general direction. 

“Should I charge a babysitting fee?” 

“He called me ‘baby’ and we haven’t even gone on our first date yet!” Kuroo crowed.

“That looked like _second_ base from over here.” Kenma said while he scooped chips into an already full duffel bag, his face still set in the same expression as the one he wore ten minutes ago.


	2. love on the run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Daichi leads his crew on a mission.

Last week, a herd of small, unpainted animatronic elephants had sharted cream and strawberry flavored gel all over Azumane’s lap while he was trying to fix up their filters. The herd had then triumphantly trumpeted for a quarter of an hour. 

This was just one example of the many different ways animatronic animals could be dangerous. 

Another example would be the rhinoceros-alligator hybrids that were chasing Daichi and a few other members of _Wild Crow_ through fog and darkness in the wee hours of the morning. The herd of animatronic chimera was spitting acid and shrapnel and roaring like lions. It was a little scary, but Daichi’s been in this line of work for five years now and his idea of terrifying was pretty warped at this point. 

“Nishinoya, do you know where the drop off zone is?” Daichi shouted. His helmet picked it his words and static crackled tensely for a moment before Nishinoya’s voice filtered through in reply. 

“Yep. Requesting Suga’s unit to cover me as I make my descent.” 

“Go for it. My unit is taking rear guard. Time to play a little defense.” 

The creak of Azumane’s gloves as his grip tightened on the gun in his hands was almost audible over the roar of the chimera and the rush of the wind as Daichi set his bike into reverse and began flying backwards, directly towards the oncoming herd.

Azumane shifted so that his back was pressed more tightly to Daichi’s and began to open fire, the recoil of the gun reverberating through both of them as he fired off three consecutive blasts into the fog. Each energy beam screamed towards it’s target, setting off a blaze that had the back of Daichi’s neck prickling from the heat of it. Flickering orange shapes were illuminated like poorly made shadow puppets through the dense fog.

Roars turned into the shriek and whine of metal warping. 

Daichi sent the bike zooming forward again. The first of the herd’s footsteps were growing too clear.

Usually, Azumane would be riding with Suga and Nishinoya with Diachi. 

Today was an exception. Only one person on a bike would have been able to get to the designated drop off zone, and Nishinoya was the only one with the skills and experience to be able to land safely while maneuvering their heavily armored and unwieldy bikes.

“Dropped off the package. Heading back to the ship now,” Nishinoya said. 

Daichi breathed a sigh of relief and felt Azumane do the same. He kicked his bike into high gear and veered upwards. 

The ship was hovering at high altitudes where the fog was thinning and the light of two suns was beginning to pierce through the cover of night.

A strange rattling sound came up from behind him and Daichi looked back to see the ten or so animatronic chimeras approaching with huge, metal wings sprouting from their back. 

“Un-fucking-believable,” Azumane said even as he took aim. “If this is minimal, then I don’t want to know what’s high security.”

“Kageyama, fall back. Have Hinata start to shoot at anything that moves.”

“But what if...”

Daichi said as sternly as he could, “Don’t worry about hitting us. Just shoot. If those things get close enough to the ship then we’d be even more fucked than ever.”

Azumane had fired off six shots now and Daichi heard four of them connect. He swerved to avoid something that was closing in from below and nearly scraped one of the wings of the bike against the sturdy, silver belly of a chimera. 

A blast of orange light rocketed down from above and smashed into the chimera just as it reared back and began to dive for Daichi and Azumane. 

Azumane’s next three shots connected. Orange fireworks flared in the distance as chimera shrieked. 

“I hit nine and ten!” Hinata cried excitedly while two more blasts went off. 

“Great. Fall back to the ship.” 

Daichi gunned the throttle so that the thrusters on the bike were burning with white heat as he raced for his ship before anything else could try to kill them all today. 

*

“So,” Azumane panted as he lay on his back, helmet resting on his belly and head resting in Suga’s lap. 

“What?” Daichi gasped. 

They were all laying on the ground of the hull of the ship trying to catch their breaths. Their guns and bikes were still warm next to them.

“That was a close one.” 

Suga made shushing noises and continued to braid Azumane’s hair into a french plait. 

“But there have been worse.” 

“Oh, I remember,” Azumane said. “But on a happier note, congratulations.” 

Daichi made a face at no one in particular. In a bit he was going to go dig up some food, but right now all he wanted to do was let his muscles congeal into goo and lay in a tired puddle next to his bike. He wasn’t as young as he used to be. “For what?” he asked despite himself.

“You and the captain of _Tokyo Meow Meow II_ are an item now, right?” 

“There’s nothing going on between us!” Daichi said incredulously. 

Azumane must have heard something in Daichi’s tone because he then asked, “But what if something did? Go on between you.” 

Daichi didn’t bother with responding. There wasn’t anything to be going on about, was the thing. 

He lay next to his heavily armored bike, one of a kind and built with his own two hands, and tried to breathe through his nose. He felt like a winner today. Tomorrow, he was going to play way more rounds of poker than was advisable and lose a fuckton of credits, because tomorrow morning they were all getting paid for a job well done and the day after that they were going to go off planet once again, putting their lives on the line for more adventures in deep space. 

The saying goes: lift off into space a dreamer, land back on [place of origin] a gamble, but there are just some things you should know better than to bet with. 

“How did the turns on the bike feel?” Daichi said after a beat. "The leg braces holding you onto the bike doing their job?" 

“They were good,” Azumane said. He didn’t look at Daichi as he said it. Instead, he smiled up at Suga who was tying off the end of his plait with a hair tie. Nishinoya head had now replaced Azumane’s helmet in a place of honor at his stomach, his arms thrown over Azumane’s hips as Azumane ran his fingers through his hair. 

Seeing them all together and so sweet on each other made something twist in Daichi’s chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /flings self into floating space debris. what are titles and plot things i cry into the abyss. the abyss burps out kurodai at me and i cry.


	3. love ya through the phone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Daichi must make an important call.

Trading chores with Azumane for the day was a decision Daichi was quickly coming to regret. Five hundred credits was riding on the line though, and Daichi didn’t like to back down from challenges. 

Whenever _Wild Crow_ was moored at a port, her hull transformed into an impromptu little shop where repairs were done at a low, flat hourly rate. Azumane could transform a completely trashed hunk of metal into something wonderful with his delicate touch, but today, all their customers were going to have to deal with Daichi. 

Azumane was too busy in the tiny kitchenette of the ship scrubbing his heart out over three week’s worth of dishes to be of assistance.

Daichi stared at the motionless catdroid on the workbench in front of him for another second before he took off his left work glove and rummaged around in his pockets for his phone. 

It was surprisingly easy to press the little icon indicating recent calls and tap the photo of a familiar face. 

He put his phone into a clamp he had managed to jerry rig makeshift stand that gave a clear view of the workbench from his front facing camera. 

“Wha? Sawamura?” A blurry voice asked from his phone. 

“Ohayou,” Daichi said. “Do you have a minute?” 

“No, no. Just. Give _me_ a minute. Uh, five minutes.” 

A staticky burst of white noise came crackling out of his phone. 

Daichi settled down to wait, pulling up some schematics of different models of catdroids from the web to check for any matches. 

It wasn’t like he was a bad mechanic. He was just used to working on less personalized machines, and working on the software side of things.

There was less staring-at-a-wrecked-animatronic-companion-with-no-idea-what-to-do, and more pouring-over-code-line-by-line-after-having-been-wired-in-for-fifteen-hours.

He was halfway through analyzing the first of many catdroid models when he heard steps rattling up the gangway leading into the ship’s hull.

“Hey, Daichi, I see you and Asahi shook on that bet,” said Suga. He was the first mate of _Wild Crow_ , making him the go-to guy in the event something happened to Daichi. 

Daichi nearly brained himself on the low hanging light shining onto his workbench when he jumped from surprise. He hadn’t heard Suga’s approach at all.

“That was a close call. The mantle of captaincy would have been yours if I hadn’t ducked,” Daichi muttered. He held his thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart to indicate how close. 

Suga just smiled cheerily and put down the mid-sized box and the canvas bag he had been carrying in order to lean over and get a better look at the the catdroid splayed out on the workbench, shiny innards gleaming wetly in the spotlight. “Looks like you’ve got a lot of work to do today. What happened to it?”

“Yuki’s twelve and Catarang’s at least six. They were playing in front of their housing complex when someone drove by on a hovercraft with very sharp wings.” 

Suga grimaced. “Good luck. It’s not just money riding on this thing now, it’s a small child’s fragile and loving heart.”

Daichi sighed deeply. “Don’t remind me. I’m going to be punished severely in the afterlife for various things, but let’s hope one of those things isn’t doing a shoddy job of fixing up a catdroid.”

Suga’s laugh was still the same one from when they were in high school together. They’d dreamed of going off planet and piloting a ship out to see the stars that much more clearly from outer space. 

Well. Here they were. 

“I’m back!” A breathless voice called out from his phone, sounding significantly more awake. 

“You got help,” Suga said. His laughter had petered off to just the shadow of a good time lurking at the edges of his voice. “Isn’t that cheating?” 

“What? Like you doing the dishes with Azumane after you put your things away isn’t? Don’t try to deny it.”

“Hi Suga! What exactly am I looking at? It looks like a poorly dissected catdroid.”

“Hi Kuroo,” Suga said warmly and then grinned as he continued, “Daichi made a bet and now he’s on official fixer-upper duty for all of today. He’s got a catdroid to fix up properly lest he break the heart of a small, innocent babe, so don’t let him down.” 

“Suga!” Daichi would have dropped his face into his hands if only he hadn’t been wearing his work gloves. 

“I’ll try my best,” Kuroo replied. Right now, Kuroo would be ducking and looking up through his lashes in a display of false modesty. His true feelings would tucked behind the curved edges of his small smile. 

Daichi could almost see Kuroo in his mind’s eye, blinking up at his innocuously as if to say: Who? Me? Smug that you have so much faith and trust in me? Never!

Suga took up his things and left without another word. His knowing smile said it all and Daichi stuck out his tongue at Suga’s retreating form like he wasn’t a fully grown adult human. 

“Would you mind moving the camera a bit closer to the chest cavity?” Kuroo asked.

And so it began. What had felt like minutes of working on the catdroid turned out to be three hours. Kuroo was excitedly telling him to wipe down the catdroid’s fur with a soft cloth by the end of it and excitedly singing praise to Catarang.

Kuroo’s soft laughter made Daichi’s heart perform a triple lutz right into his lungs, pushing the breath out of him in a deceptively gentle manner. 

Despite some of his less than stellar suggestions (like attaching rocket boosters to Catarang’s sides), Kuroo had been good counsel to have. He’d been the one who had noticed the catdroid was in need of a new pubic symphysis, but it as Daichi who had had to cut the metal, lube it up, and insert the damn thing with Kuroo’s demonic cackles echoing in the background. They made a pretty good team all things considered.

“Thanks for all the help. I’m really sorry about waking you,” Daichi said.

“Don’t worry about it, Sawamura. I should have been awake anyway.” 

“I’ll buy you drink or something, I definitely owe you.”

“Sure thing,” Kuroo said. 

“Thanks again.” 

Daichi hung up with the single tap of a finger and smiled absently at the catdroid yawning hugely, tiny chrome fangs flashing bright. Catarang whirred as Daichi ran a hand along its side and it began to purr as Daichi reached up to scratch its ears.

Daichi's idly wonders how long it'll be before he actually gets to see Kuroo in person again, but then his heart nearly stops itself while it screams at his brain to tell him to retract that thought immediately, there will be no pining of this vessel.

Catarang gives a questioning meow and Daichi stands too abruptly, shaken out of imagining his heart open right up at the aortic valve and shout a message to his brain. Kuroo drove his imagination up the wall and, only occasionally, into the gutters, even when he wasn't bodily present.

"Right, right, let's get you home," Daichi said to Catarang.


	4. love locked down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Daichi is locked in a cell with Captain Kuroo.

Daichi knew that he was in trouble when he woke up in a small room, head pounding unpleasantly with too many riotous colors. 

Kuroo was leaning over him with an honest to Buddha concerned expression on his face. 

The last time he had seen Kuroo was via a holomail he’d received four days ago. The huge green bruise spreading across his cheek hadn’t been there four days ago.

Daichi’s back screamed as he tried to sit up. Kuroo put a steadying hand on his shoulder to gently pushed him back down. 

“What’s going on?” Daichi murmured. The last thing he remembered was walking out of a pawn shop after being relieved of a pound of dog biscuits Kageyama had brought on board two months ago thinking they were biscuits made for people. 

Daichi hadn’t thought to wonder why a pawn shop was buying doggy treats.

“Not that I’m unhappy to see you,” Kuroo whispered, “but being here together in pretty low on my wish list, if you know what I mean.”

A fluffy pomeranian-like creature standing on two legs appeared in the doorway, face distorted through the red force field buzzing at the entry way. 

Kuroo crouched next to him, no, over him, protectively. 

“Hello, foul humans, I am Barktemis.” He tapped the translator box at his throat irritatedly and glared at them from across the room. 

He then sniffed the air with a wet, black nose and continued, “You stink of fear. Here’s something that’s going to make you smell worse. The two of your are charged with selling and exchanging highly regulated goods without the permission of the Hound.” 

Barktemis touched the stun gun resting at his hip and let the light catch alien claws sprouting from the backs of the gloves covering his soft-looking paws. 

Daichi could hear the capital letters and he turned to Kuroo only to be met with an equally bewildered expression. 

“Pardon?”

“You’re both awful, no good space pirates who dared to traffick black market goods,” Barktemis snapped. “Your case is being reviewed by the Kennel right now. Don’t expect good news any time soon.” He turned and walked away.

Kuroo ran a hand through his hair, making it stand higher as collapsed onto the ground next to Daichi. 

“I hope our crew knows we’re missing,” Daichi said.

“Someone will be looking for us in deep space.” 

“Hopefully,” Daichi said in an hopeless tone. 

Kuroo took his hand and squeezed, “More importantly, do you have any idea what we might have done to land us in here?” 

A pregnant pause followed Kuroo’s question and Daichi spent a moment savoring the feel of one cool hand gripping his own hand with steady pressure. At least he wasn’t alone.

“It was those dog biscuits wasn’t it!” Daichi and Kuroo blurted out at the same time. Their eyes bugged out with the proper amount of panic and incredulousness the situation demanded. 

“Kageyama bought them by mistake!” Daichi sighed at the same time Kuroo cursed, “Fucking Yamamoto bought it as gag gift for my birthday.”

“We’re royally fucked.” Kuroo said as he rolled over so that his face was pressed against Daichi’s side. His nose was digging into one of Daichi’s ribs and his breath was warm where he breathed, but Daichi couldn’t find it in himself to mind. He wasn’t alone, and it was always good to be reminded of that.

“Uh, I mean, all is not lost?” Daichi said as he hesitantly pet Kuroo’s hair in what he hoped was a comforting manner. 

Kuroo made an unhappy noise when he stopped, so he took it as a sign and started running his hand through his hair with more confidence, tugging a little in a way that made Kuroo sigh against his side, warm and close. 

“The Kennel still has to decide what to do with us.” 

“You know,” Daichi said thoughtfully, “I’m pretty I’ve seen this system before.” 

“What system?” 

Daichi shifted his eyes to the low buzzing force field meaningfully. The force field looked a little old, weathered even, and now that he thought about it, it seemed to be chugging along rather weakly. 

Kuroo glanced at the entryway and his eyes widened as he looked back at Daichi. 

“You’ve been to jail before?” Kuroo’s eyebrows said. 

“It was on accident!” Daichi tried to explain with his eyes.

“I’m glad I’m not alone,” Daichi said aloud. He pretended to stretch and pointed at places where he thought cameras might be. “I’m glad that you’re here,” he added, for the benefit of anyone watching them. 

“Me too.” Kuroo leaned over Daichi and winked. He was close enough that Daichi thought he could feel the flutter of his lashes on his cheek.


	5. intermission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The search for Captain Daichi and Captain Kuroo begins.

“So I was like ‘Daichi, Daichi, Daichi!’ and he was like ‘Yes?’ and I was like ‘I have a very important question for you’ and he was like ‘Pray tell’.”

Nishinoya punched Tanaka in the shoulder. 

“Sawamura doesn’t talk like that.” 

“Yeah, he does, he’s like middle aged or whatever.”

Tanaka noded in a very self important way. The only reason he was getting away with talking about their captain like this was because their captain wasn’t on board as of right now. It’d been hours since they’d seen him last and he hadn’t checked back in yet. He was _supposed_ to be selling that giant bag of dog biscuits Kageyama had brought on board, but who knew what he was doing now. 

“Shouldn’t you two be more worried?” Azumane asked. 

Most of the crew had piled into the control room and since there were only enough seats to hold the captain, first and second mate, and translator, everyone had taken up various places on the ground. Nishinoya was curled up on Azumane while Tanaka sat as close to foot of second mate-acting-first mate Kiyoko Shimizu’s chair as he dared.

Suga was currently in the captain’s chair engaged in a deep and serious discussion with Kiyoko. 

Nishinoya shook his head. “The captain’s probably fine. I’m more worried I’m about to lose money. Go on.” 

Tanaka didn’t need to be told twice and immediately continued, “Okay, so then I was like ‘Alright, this is a very serious question posed by the chief steward of your ship in order to assist in maintaining the top--

“And then he cut me off! He asked, ‘How much did you bet?’

“And I was like, ‘Fifty credits rides on your answer to this question.’”

Throwing his hands up as if to ward off oncoming evil, Nishinoya then exclaimed, “You lying dog! We bet two hundred on his answer.” 

The Chief Steward shook his head, “I didn’t want to pressure him! It was a very delicate operation.”

Nishinoya still couldn’t tell if Tanaka was smiling like he’d won or if he was just sad that he had to continue telling the story. “Well, get on with it,” Nishinoya urged. 

“So then he was like, ‘What’s the question?’ And I was like ‘Which do you prefer.’ and I held up a picture of some humanoid models on my tablet and was like, ‘Legs or ass?’”

“And?!” 

“And he grew quiet like he was thinking hard. His eyes got that really focussed look like when on we’re on the job and he’s faced with a tough decision. He wasn’t even looking at the photo--”

Nishinoya propped himself up on Asahi’s chest and punched Tanaka again, this time in the chest, just barely missing his solar plexus and making him wheeze as he stopped talking long enough to gasp for air.

“Legs, he said legs, I owe you two hundred,” Tanaka huffed. “You win! I’ll pay up after the next job.” 

Nishinoya smiled and crowed triumphantly.

*

Kai headed down a series of platforms until he reached the engine room. Poking his head in, he looked around in the gloom until he caught sight of Kozume’s bleached bob. 

“Any idea where he might be?” Kai called. 

Kozume stopped fiddling with something and lifted his head. He gave Kai a flat look and said, “No idea.”

“We’re all a little worried. _Mew Mew_ misses him. I can tell from the way she rattles when he’s gone.” 

“Don’t be fooled by her,” Kozume told him severely. He had a smear of grease running down the side of his cheek where he’d forgotten that his hands were dirty and rubbed at his face anyway, so he’d probably been in here for a while. “He was supposed to check engine two this morning, but since he’s so conveniently missing...” 

Kai laughed. “Are you saying that he’s missing to avoid doing his chores?” 

“Maybe. Or trying to flirt with some sentient being or other.” 

“Trying,” Kai repeated and returned the wane smile Kozume offered him. Everyone was worried, but no one wanted to admit it, least of all the ship’s second engineer, who had known Kuroo since they’d grown up together in Tokyo. “Just announce on the comms when you’re done so we can lift off and start cruising through local air space to look for our wayward captain. We already have people on street level looking for him.” 

“Sure thing,” Kozume muttered, his voice coming in faint as he turned back to the gutted engine before him. 

Kai climbed back up to the control room and sat in the captain’s chair heavily. Yaku spun in his own chair to glance at Kai, his fingers still flying over the holographic keyboard that moved to follow his hands. “So?” 

“No idea.” 

“I’ve send out messages to his usual haunts at port, but no one’s seen him,” Yaku said. 

“Maybe it’s like that time on Jupiter,” Kai suggested. Being a captain in search of your captain was a hard place to be in and Kai liked it less and less as time dragged on. “At Disney Galaxy.”

“The time where Kuroo was so busy taking selfies while in line for Space Mountain that he didn’t realize Lev had been taken in by park police?” 

“Yeah, that time.” 

Yaku sighed and raised a hand to his temple. “I still can’t believe that happened.” 

“Me neither,” Kai said. He spun around in the captain’s chair, his toes barely brushing the ground as he leaned back and took in the layout of the foreign port projected by sensors into the middle of the control room. The foreign port was full of small shops and streets that even TMMII’s crew would have difficulty navigating despite their specialty running along the lines of ‘search and destroy’. They were good extraordinarily good at connecting the dots, but this mission of finding Kuroo was proving to be difficult.

“In his defense, Space Mountain was pretty far from where Lev was picked up and reception was bad in that area of the park.” 

Yaku shook his head, but the edges of his mouth were pulling up into a smile. Kai grinned back as Yamamoto’s voice filtered in through speakers, the sounds of a bustling marketplace overlaying TMMII’s third mate’s announcement. “If Kuroo’s on planet, he’s not at port anymore. We even checked with the merchant who rang him up, that place that transferred credits into his account, but they haven’t seen him since he left the shop.” 

“Thanks, Yamamoto. Bring everyone back up, I guess. We’ll fly out around the area and scan for him.”

“Make sure Lev hasn’t been arrested again,” Yaku chimed in and Yamamoto’s loud laugh echoed through the speakers before he cut the connection. 

“Where could he have gone?” Kai asked to no one in particular.

“No where we can’t follow,” Yaku said grimly.


End file.
